Subscription podcasting comes of age

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The biggest creator news of the week came from the Apple Event yesterday where Apple announced paid podcast subscriptions.

Creators on the Apple Podcasters Program will get a single show page for both free listeners and paid subscribers.

And we will be able to create a channel - a single branded destination for multiple podcasts. Apple states:

These additional benefits can be:

Creators will receive 70% of the subscription price which increases to 85% after one year. Any ad revenue stays at 100% for the creator.

A monthly price is required for subscriptions, an annual price is optional.

What’s interesting, with the recent trend of video podcasts, is that Apple recommends audio over video, stating:

Apple breaks down this new paradigm into three episode types:

The third is the most interesting to me. Short clips were mentioned by Sam & Shaan in this recent episode of the My First Million podcast as a strategy they are using to scale their downloads to a goal of 100K a month.

Apple has a dedicated page on how to make a great podcast trailer to ‘pique interest by introducing the themes of your show and sample interviews’. They mention three options:

The company also has a whole marketing and promotions section on how to package your podcast. It’s impressive.

Well, first up, creators will not receive any specific info about their subscribers and will have no direct connection with our listeners:

Then there is an annual fee of $20 to be included in Apple’s program whereas with Patreon you simply earn together:

As such, you’re essentially selling content, rather than a subscription you own.

I’d rather sell subscriptions like I did on Substack.

However there will be some exodus, with Jason Calacanis having already announced he’s leaving his Patreon page and will be selling subscriptions through Apple Podcasts, something he asked about 15 years ago!

I’m considering starting a new podcast, but will wait to assess all options, in particular when Spotify launches paid subs on Anchor.

Since last week’s newsletter on why I’m not buying Bitclout, an old school friend (that’s an old friend from school, not an old-school friend) who has never bought crypto before, hit me up saying he’s just bought Dogecoin and a bunch of other random sh*t coins.

I’ve also continued thinking some more about creator coins…

I listened to an interesting conversation on the Bitclout Podcast between the host and a marketer / poker player about how coin holders who make the best decisions for their community will win out long term (i.e. achieve a higher market cap).

But one of my all-time favourite quotes from a fellow Brit and influential economist is, “in the long run we are all dead”.

Which got me thinking: what happens to your coin when you actually are dead or, less morbidly, when you want to stop rocking the influencer game?

No-one has yet answered. Hit reply if you know.

Cheers!

Richard

ps I know I’ve been breaking my rules. First of all, I said there would be no web archive, and now I’ve started using emojis. Please forgive me, I just want you to open my emails (The Hustle uses them who crush open-rates)